April 10th, 2012 by Sten Franke
It is proof for the success of a young, ambitious web service, when others are being built on its basis augmenting it. Looked at it this way, Pinterest seems to become a huge success story in the net, as ever more services integrate the online pin wall.
The most exciting tool amplifying Pinterest is PinReach. The new service measures the reach a member of the hyped network attains. The US-Americans developed the PinReach Score depicting the latter.
PinReach doesn’t reveal how this score is evaluated, though. Nevertheless they explain that, for instance, repins are more important than own pins. “Once members start repinning your item your score will increase much quicker. Another similar relationship exists between followers and who you follow. Simply following 500 members will do far less for your score than having 500 new followers on your account“, an illuminating text states.
PinReach of Christine Martinez
The tool integrates the amount of pins, repins, likes, followers, followings, comments and boards in one piece. Extra graphics are analyzing the pin-history on top of it and identifies the most popular boards.
Never mind the statistics and analyses, the experts of PinReach are aware that Pinterest is all about easy stuff: „Ultimately, the goal should be to produce and share great content on Pinterest.“
March 21st, 2012 by Mathias Buerk
Networks and videos dominate in social media. They combine for more than 50% of the worldwide usage of the Top 20 social media platforms. Wikis, blogging platforms and micro-blogging services follow. The aim of ethority’s study about the usage and importance of the variable platforms and channels was: Which platforms are being used most each month and how high is the number of unique visitors? The latter tells more about the success of a platform as, for instance, the number of registered (active/inactive) user accounts (e.g. facebook: 850 Mio) or of page views.
The Top 5 surprise little: Facebook ranks 1st place with 950 Mio unique visitors, YouTube ranks 2nd with 880 Mio, and Wikipedia is 3rd with 410 Mio unique visitors. Blogspot, accounting for 340 Mio unique visitors is the biggest blogging platform worldwide and takes the 4th place, Twitter being 5th with half of that, 170 Mio unique visitors.
Google+, which has been written off by many, at least conquered a respectable 8th place considering their short existence. Soon, then, a channel hardly known in most of the Western World follows: Dailymotion, in Tunesia, France, Turkey, Belgium, Morocco, Algier, and Pakistan according to Alexa among the Top 50 sites, in the USA only takes 214th spot. Badoo, popular in the Mediterranean region, Cameroon and Latin America, and Orkut in Brazil are further channels to be mentioned here.
Social Media Top 20 sites 2012 infographic
The graphic shows in the first place, which platforms the Top 20 social media platforms are. Furthermore it lays out how the usage is distributed among variable categories of social media usage. Networks account for 36% of it, and 27% to video sites. Blogging platforms surmount Wikis in their importance, 15% and 12% of social media usage respectively. 5% is allocated to micro-blogging services. Others is made up of picture platforms like flickr and Photobucket, pinning site Pinterest, review site tripadvisor and the content platforms Scribd and Slideshare.
Related to this we want to point to the fact that very common apps like Foursquare and Instagram do not appear here. The do have relatively few unique visitors (5.6 Mio and 9.9 Mio, respectively), but many more registered accounts (15 Mio and 27 Mio, respectively). As they are used on mobile devices they do not require a visit to their website. This is why the number of unique visitors is not as relevant to those services as to others to capture their significance. In future articles we will consider the numbers of the mobile use of apps we do not have at the moment, though.
May 13th, 2008 by Sten Franke
Within the channels of user generated media, family holidays are the most frequently mentioned issue. Users in weblogs like to discuss the topic of winter holidays, whereas a vacation in the snow does not enjoy great popularity in online communities. Here, users prefer to talk about cruises, while this topic cannot be found under the bloggers’ top 5 ways of travelling. Moreover, and in contrast to active online community members, bloggers rather choose to have conversations about package tours. Concerning the ways to travel, bloggers and online community members seem to agree on adventure and city travels. In both channels of communication, they are the most frequently discussed.
Top Ways to Travel – Online Communities:
Cruises
Last Minute
Adventure Vacations
City Trips
Family Holidays
Top Ways to Travel – Weblogs:
Package Tours
Adventure Vacations
City Trips
Winter Holidays
Family Holidays
Users in weblogs and online communities also agree on the way of booking travels. At this, statements for booking offline have the lion’s share of the topics. About 2/3 of the statements on both channels are allotted to the traditional booking method. This confirms the results of the recent AGOF study. Consumers like to obtain detailed advice in the user generated channels but prefer to book offline in a travel agency.
Booking Methods – Online Communities:
Internet
Travel Agency
Booking Methods – Weblogs:
Internet
Travel Agency
The here described booking behaviour indicates the path that marketers have to take in the future. The increasing consumer focus on information concerning products or travels in online domains sets new benchmarks for a successful marketing mix. No matter if it is a large-scale print campaign or an elaborate TV spot – traditional forms of advertisement impress consumers to a lesser and lesser extend. Therefore, it is essential to meet the consumer where he increasingly searches for information. More and more often, customers use portals such as Holidaycheck, TripAdvisor or Opodien in order to obtain information about their potential travel destinations and holiday accommodations before booking. In any case, marketers of the tourism industry should be prepared for this tendency, especially in consideration of the current number of internet users. By now, according to the latest survey of Bitkom, already 63% of the Germans roam the internet.
May 13th, 2008 by Sten Franke
Regarding travels outside Europe, the US and Asia are clearly the main topics in weblogs and online communities. This resulted from the quantitative analysis of consumer comments in the current study. For the intense buzz in the United States, surely the decisive factor is the favourable dollar exchange rate because of which the US has become something like a shopper’s paradise.
In online communities, the African continent ranks third as a potential travel destination, whereas it ranks fifth concerning the overall buzz in weblogs. Bloggers show a greater interest in American Oceania and South America.
This quantitative netnographic study was based on 6500 user opinions in weblogs and online communities concerning the topic of Social Networks. The categorized and evaluated comments originate from ca. 1000 blogs and 400 online communities which have been located with the assistance of the gridmaster technology. Within the scope of this process, the respective channels of communication, topics and the tonality of the comments have been recorded.
The ethority study illustrates the importance of the channels of communication within web 2.0 for the tourism industry. Online communities and weblogs are increasingly used by consumers as relevant sources of information. Furthermore, recommendations, which are exchanged in these channels of communication, exert direct influence on booking decisions. The studies conducted by the American market research institute eMarketer, in collaboration with Deloitte (2007), are able to document this influence by means of their data.
